Can The
U.S. Combat Election Interference If Some Don't Believe It's
Happening?

America's adversaries are circling like coyotes
just beyond the light from the campfire, top intelligence officials
warn — but that's not the scariest thing to some members of the
Senate intelligence committee.

What bothers them is the need to convince people
the coyotes are there.

"My problem is, I talk to people in Maine who
say, 'the whole thing is a witch hunt and it's a hoax,' because
that's what the president told me," said Sen. Angus King,
I-Maine.

IRS Issues
Urgent Warning On New Tax Refund Scam - And It's Not What You'd
Expect

Just when you thought you'd read about all of the
tax scams: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is warning taxpayers
about a new – and growing – scam involving erroneous
tax refunds being deposited into real taxpayer bank accounts.
Then, the crooks use various tactics to con taxpayers into turning
over the funds. It's a new twist on an old scam.

Here's how it works. Thieves are using phishing
and other schemes to steal
client data from tax professionals. Then, using that data, they
file fraudulent tax returns and use the taxpayers' real bank accounts
to deposit erroneous tax refunds. Finally, the thieves, posing as
IRS or other law enforcement, call attention to the error and ask
taxpayers to return the money to them.

It’s good that they are concerned about
Security, but why take this approach?

Recently-issued
guidance from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) threatens to
“yank” Title IV funding for post-secondary institutions lacking
appropriate data security safeguards. The guidance comes as the risk
of educational data breaches has intensified, as we have previously
reported.
The stakes are even higher now that ED has put Title IV recipients
on
notice that, beginning in fiscal year 2018, they may be subject
to compliance audits regarding their data security programs.

… Home to half a billion human beings, beset
by pressures both shared with other urban places and uniquely
Chinese, it’s remarkable that churning conurbations like Shanghai,
Chengdu, or Beijing are not constantly breaking out into open,
ungovernable chaos. Just like cities anywhere, though, they do not—a
stability that appears to arise almost entirely from
self-organization.

Perhaps spurred on by their distaste for
everything implied by such liberality, the Chinese government has
become convinced that a far greater degree of social control is both
necessary and possible. It now has access to a set of tools for
managing the complexity of contemporary life that it believes will
deliver better, surer, and more reliable results than anything
produced by the model of order from below.

Known by the anodyne name “social credit,”
this system is designed to reach into every corner of existence both
online and off. It monitors each individual’s consumer behavior,
conduct on social networks, and real-world infractions like speeding
tickets or quarrels with neighbors. Then it integrates them into a
single, algorithmically-determined “sincerity” score. Every
Chinese citizen receives a literal, numeric index of their
trustworthiness and virtue, and this index unlocks, well, everything.
In principle, anyway, this one number will determine the
opportunities citizens are offered, the freedoms they enjoy, and the
privileges they are granted.

KDP is Amazon’s self-publishing tool, and it’s
a simple way to take your book, turn it into a Kindle file, and start
selling it on Amazon. They’ll help you sell it and pay royalties
on each sale. It’s a great way to publish and sell a book,
especially if you don’t want to pay a fortune for printing a hard
copy.

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About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.